Seven Up - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,39

you knew."

"I didn't know!"

Silence.

"So what else do you know that I don't know?" I asked.

"How much time do we have?"

I hung up on Ranger and called Grandma.

"I want you to look up a couple names in the phone book," I said to Grandma. "I need to know where Pinwheel Soba and Dave Vincent live."

I listened to Grandma thumbing through pages, and finally she came back on the line. "Neither of them's listed."

Rats. Morelli would be able to get me the addresses, but Morelli wouldn't want me messing around with Snake Pit owners. Morelli would give me a big lecture about being careful, we'd get into a shouting match, and then I'd have to eat a lot of cake to calm down.

I took a deep breath and redialed Ranger.

"I need addresses," I told Ranger.

"Let me guess," Ranger said. "Pinwheel Soba and Dave Vincent. Pinwheel's in Miami. He moved last year. Opened a club in South Beach. Vincent lives in Princeton. There's supposed to be bad feelings between DeChooch and Vincent." He gave me Vincent's address and disconnected.

A flash of silver caught my eye and I looked up to see Mary Maggie zip around the corner in her Porsche. I pulled out after her. Not exactly following her, but keeping her in view. We were both going in the same direction. North. I stayed with her and it seemed to me she was going pretty far afield to get to a gym. I bypassed my turnoff and stayed with her through center city to north Trenton. If she'd been on guard she would have spotted me. It's hard for a single car to do a decent tail. Fortunately, Mary Maggie wasn't looking for a tail.

I dropped back when she turned onto Cherry Street. I parked around the corner from Ronald DeChooch's house and watched Mary Maggie get out of her car, walk to the door, and ring the doorbell. The door opened and Mary Maggie stepped inside. Ten minutes later, the front door opened again and Mary Maggie Mason came out. She stood on the front porch for a minute or two talking to Ronald. Then she got into her car and drove away. This time she went to a gym. I watched her park and go into the building and then I left.

I took Route 1 to Princeton, hauled out a map, and located Vincent's house. Princeton isn't actually part of New Jersey. It's a small island of wealth and intellectual eccentricity floating in the Sea of Central Megalopolis. It's an honest-to-god town awash in the land of the strip mall. Hair is smaller, heels are shorter, asses are tighter in Princeton.

Vincent owned a large yellow-and-white colonial set onto a half-acre lot on the edge of town. There was a detached two-car garage. No cars in the driveway. No flag proclaiming that Eddie DeChooch was in residence. I parked one house down on the opposite side of the street and watched the house. Very boring. Nothing happening. No cars cruising by. No children playing on the sidewalk. No metal blaring out of a second-story boom box. A bastion of respectability and decorum. And a little intimidating. Knowing it was bought with Snake Pit profits did nothing to alter the feeling of old-money snootiness. I didn't think Dave Vincent would appreciate having his peaceful Sunday disturbed by a bounty hunter looking for Eddie DeChooch. And I could be going out on a limb here, but I suspected Mrs. Vincent wouldn't take a chance on tarnishing her social standing by harboring the likes of Choochy.

After I'd done an hour of worthless surveillance a cop car crept down the street and pulled up behind me. Great. I was about to get rousted out of the neighborhood. If someone caught me sitting in front of their house in the Burg, they'd send their dog out to take a leak on my car wheel. Backup action would be a string of profanities yelled at me to get the hell out of there. In Princeton they send a perfectly pressed, perfectly polite officer of the law to make an inquiry. Is this class, or what?

There didn't seem to be anything gained by stressing Officer Perfect so I got out of my car and walked back to him while he was checking my plate. I passed him my card and the bond contract stating my right to apprehend Eddie DeChooch. And I gave him the standard explanation of routine surveillance.

Then he explained to me that the good people